Have U heard about...

VirtualDesktops on USB!!

       Equipping mobile workers with laptops can be expensive, as well as risky.Machines need to be secured and patched regularly, and if they are lost, they can present a security risk.

Now, with the rise of high-capacity USB memory sticks, an alternative to traditional mobile business computing is emerging. By creating a virtual desktop on a USB thumb drive, companies can provide employees with the means to communicate safely with corporate systems and work securely from any PC, including a home machine or a device in an Internet café.

If the virtual environment is correctly configured, the user should be protected from any viruses or keyloggers that may be lurking on the host machine. And when they close the session and remove the USB stick, users should leave no footprint or clue that they had ever used the machine.

Provided the user can find a PC to use, the advantages are clear. The USB stick is cheaper, lighter to carry and can be centrally managed. If it is encrypted, it has zero value to a thief or to someone who finds it in the street. It can also be a useful business continuity measure if employees are suddenly prevented from using their office systems. The rapid distribution of USB devices would allow employees to work from home while maintaining policy control.

The concept of creating a virtual desktop on a USB stick is nothing new. A Web search for "PC on a USB stick" turns up several products, some of them open source, that allow users to piggyback on someone else's computer and run their own virtual desktop. The difference with the new products appearing on the market, however, is that they incorporate native encryption on the USB stick , are packaged with security in mind, and are designed to be managed centrally by the company issuing them to its employees.

What r Clouds... n What is *Cloud-Computing??

 

 

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Essential Characteristics:

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models:

Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

Are We Engaged in a Cyberwar???

Differentiating Between Spying, Crime and Warfare...

America is under virtual attacks, with key government, military and private-sector information systems being assaulted from abroad. But none of that means we're experiencing a cyberwar.

That's the reckoning of James Lewis, senior fellow at the public-interest policy group Center for International and Strategic Studies. "Spying and crime are not acts of war," Lewis said at last week's panel discussion - Cyberwar: Is Congress Preparing for the Common Defense? - at the State of the Net Conference sponsored by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. "I don't think we have seen a case of state-versus-state cyberwarfare. "

What would cyberwarfare entail? Some experts suggest that cyberwar - like kinetic war - must cause significant damage and disruption to critical physical infrastructures and human casualties, including deaths.

"We have not seen this type of kinetic attack. That does not mean that it won't happen if we get into a conflict with an advanced opponent," Lewis said. "They have done the reconnaissance, they have done the planning, they have built the tools to let them disrupt things like critical infrastructure. This will be part of warfare in the future. But we're in the stages before cyberwarfare. We are in the stages of people poking around. They're trying to figure out what are the rules, what are the thresholds, what's the other guy up to."

Conventional war has rules, and Congress should address the legal structure of cyberwarfare. "It's not like we're writing on blank slate here," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at Center For Democracy and Technology, a not-for-profit group that advocates a free and open Internet. "There are rules of war that would have to follow if there was an (cyber) attack."

I.T.SecurityLatest@lerts!!

A Requirement of I.T. Security Career Planning!!

I.T.Security professionals may know where they want their careers to go, but they aren't doing much about it.

People seem to believe that their careers are going to take care of themselves.

That's the key finding from a recent information security career survey conducted by Web-based information security career consultancy, Information Security Leaders. The survey tallied responses from nearly 1,000 IT security professionals on questions from career planning to job satisfaction.

While over 65% of respondents claimed to be "more than confident" that they would reach their ultimate career goals, only one in six respondents had actually written an information security career plan.

"People spend more time planning their vacations than they spend planning where they want to be 10 years from now in their careers," said, one of Information Security Leaders' co-founders. "It blows my mind."

IT security career advice:

Stay or jump ship? How to be happy with your infosec job: Don't leave your job just yet.

Couple this with the fact that, of the 68.4% of respondents who reported that their career development was "very important" or "extremely important," more than half plan to spend less than $1,000 on that development in the following year, and it makes sense that job satisfaction among respondents was also surprisingly low.

"I was really surprised how many people were less than satisfied [with their current jobs], and why," said,co-founder of Information Security Leaders. "People seem to believe that their careers are going to take care of themselves…[many are] really confident that their resumes differentiate them from others. But I look at resumes all day long and that's pretty far from the truth."

Of the respondents, more than 50% reported that they are "less than satisfied" with their current job, while only 21% reported being "more than satisfied."

So what steps should infosec pros take to invest in their careers? "Any investment you make is a good one," said Kushner. "The investment for a person should be determined by what makes sense for them, and what makes sense is determined by going through a self-assessment process. … Look at job descriptions of the jobs you want, and map your skills to those." And if your skills don't match up, figure out what you need to do to get them there by evaluating your weaknesses. "You might think you understand business, but do you understand business on a level that would be good enough for the C-suite?" SearchSecurity radio:

But above all, "write a plan," & "You have to know where you're going in order to get there."

Of the infosec pros that reported having a written career plan, 38.4% responded that they held director-level or above positions, compared to 26% of those who had no written plan and held similar positions. Salaries were also better for those with written career plans: 35.7% of those who had such a plan make an annual salary of $120,000 or above, as opposed to only 24.4% of those who had no written career plan and made similar salaries.